caulfield12

Why isn't there a single non-white player or coach on the side of LaRoche, inside or outside the White Sox organization? That's very telling. Hahn/Ventura/Sale/Eaton/Shark/Duke/Lawrie/Harper/Boyer=good KW/Rollins/Avila=evil Obviously it's not that simple, but imagine KW was to be fired. What free agent would want to sign with the White Sox, knowing that Sale and Eaton were basically running the club and dictating policy? If someone like Rodon, Abreu, Jackson or Navarro said that KW was completely wrong...then I might start to think pitchforks are in order, but everything must be much more complicated than it appears in terms of the real/true opinions of the majority of the rest of the team, especially players added this past offseason.

QUOTE (Condor13 @ Mar 18, 2016 -> 08:29 PM) I hope you don't mean you would hire someone with an agreement to allow their kid to be around ALL THE TIME and then say screw you in year 2 and change it. That is some real shady s*** that KW is doing. Oh wait and then LIE/tell your management team that the problem was the employees and then tell the employees it was management and then tell everyone it was the owner. KW has lied and broken contractual agreements all this week, I can't wait to see what he does next (probably trade Sale for a bag of peanuts LITERALLY!!!!) Wasn't it Hahn that negotiated the contract? Why did Hahn, the master negotiator, include such a vague and ambiguous clause that any labor relations expert could easily predict problems eventually resulting from...? He's the one with the MBA and Harvard Law degree, shouldn't he have known better than to set that kind of precedent for one player's son?

If Drake had been clocked in the head by a throw across the infield or hit in the head and knocked out by a line drive, would Adam LaRoche blame himself? How often can you directly disrespect a front office exec and not expect to have it blow up on you? How would or should any team president in a similar situation (who had expressed concerned about dialing it back at least once if not twice to LaRoche) react to seeing the kid in the middle of the field the next day? Would they write a reprimand? Fine LaRoche? What were KW's options? Back off? Have a "secret ballot" team vote on Drake, whether he should go or stay? Every player and ex-player has respect for that playing field...it's their office where they do their work. They earned the right to be there.

Or LaRoche's interpretation of KW's meeting with him is that he felt like Drake wasn't welcome (any longer) or that there had been complaints...which isn't quite the same as directly telling someone you can't bring your kid into the clubhouse at all, ever, again. Maybe it felt that way, after the unfettered access and "non issue" of last season in Adam's mind. There's got to be some middle ground. It's easy for LaRoche to typify KW's comments like that afterwards, to cast them in the most negative light...but probably the only mistake KW made was not having a 3rd party in that room, bringing a he said/she said element into it. LaRoche isn't going to admit fault or assume responsibility. So now he can't spend any time in the clubhouse, KW lied directly to him and the team...the clause about Drake was explicitly in his contract, etc.

Good vs. Evil. The Power of Myth.

Jesus. Stupid National Party Congress in Beijing. First they blocked all the proxy/vpn programs for two weeks so SoxTalk slowed down to a crawl. Now that it's sort of working (just in time for March Madness) with the VPN again, it keeps freezing and double/triple/quadruple posting. Sigh.

You know about the only thing that would fix this is LaRoche/Drake/Sale/KW doing a joint conference and admitting it was all a pre-April Fool's Day joke to get the Sox in the national news conversation and steal some thunder from the Cubs...we've all been punk'd. LaRoche in deadpan monotone, "KW really loves THE DRAKE. Do you actually think I'm crazy enough to walk away from $13 freakin' million dollars and the 2nd Annual FamilyFirst/White Sox Faith Day festivities? Only Gil Meche would do something that stupid." Or part of a seminar/simulated case study on workplace relations by the MLBPA.

You know about the only thing that would fix this is LaRoche/Drake/Sale/KW doing a joint conference and admitting it was all a pre-April Fool's Day joke to get the Sox in the national news conversation and steal some thunder from the Cubs...we've all been punk'd. LaRoche in deadpan monotone, "KW really loves THE DRAKE. Do you actually think I'm crazy enough to walk away from $13 freakin' million dollars and the 2nd Annual FamilyFirst/White Sox Faith Day festivities? Only Gil Meche would do something that stupid." Or part of a seminar/simulated case study on workplace relations by the MLBPA.

You know about the only thing that would fix this is LaRoche/Drake/Sale/KW doing a joint conference and admitting it was all a pre-April Fool's Day joke to get the Sox in the national news conversation and steal some thunder from the Cubs...we've all been punk'd. LaRoche in deadpan monotone, "KW really loves THE DRAKE. Do you actually think I'm crazy enough to walk away from $13 freakin' million dollars and the 2nd Annual FamilyFirst/White Sox Faith Day festivities? Only Gil Meche would do something that stupid." Or part of a seminar/simulated case study on workplace relations by the MLBPA.

You know about the only thing that would fix this is LaRoche/Drake/Sale/KW doing a joint conference and admitting it was all a pre-April Fool's Day joke to get the Sox in the national news conversation and steal some thunder from the Cubs...we've all been punk'd. LaRoche in deadpan monotone, "KW actually loves THE DRAKE. Do you actually think I'm crazy enough to walk away from $13 freakin' million dollars and the 2nd Annual FamilyFirst/White Sox Faith Day festivities? Only Gil Meche would do something that stupid." Or part of a seminar/simulated case study on workplace relations by the MLBPA.

Nobody actually WANTS to trade Sale because the odds of coming out ahead are about 1 in 5. We just want him and Eaton to concentrate on baseball and stop acting like jackasses/spoiled brats. For all we know, Sale was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to launch a coup in KW's direction, and this situation provided him cover.

This just in. Yoenis Cespedes now wants to sign with the White Sox and join the circus-like atmosphere, feels it's the closest thing to the sheer craziness of NYC and White Sox apparently willing to pay him $30 million and also allow him to wear his cap backwards. Cites the DeAndre Jordan precedent. Also, better parking accommodations for all his various luxury vehicles at USCF. Threads merged for the biggest in SoxTalk history.

It's REALLY bad when it's hard to feel much sympathy in a debate between your franchise pitcher and Kenny Williams. It almost feels like...even if there is something written into the contract like the word "access," there will be equally compelling arguments on both side spelling out exactly what that means. How can you define it? 24/7? During games? On the road? In meetings and on-field drills? Going over draft boards or having access to Hahn's "Big Board," like an internship? His own locker and uniform? 3 days per week? 7 days per week? One would be stretching the bounds of plausibility to imagine it's something like "only blue and red M&M's in the candy dish" or whatever in a rider like many concert performers have...spelling out EXACTLY the conditions.

Why don't Hahn or Reinsdorf come right out and directly state the language wasn't included in the contract? Because there's now apparently this grievance pending?

And/or Ventura and Hahn not being strong enough to stand up to LaRoche...which would be understandable enough if he put up MVP numbers last season, heck, a century of baseball superstition would say you don't mess with that at all, but that definitely wasn't the case.

QUOTE (LDF @ Mar 18, 2016 -> 10:05 AM) the best course is to totally ignore every media attempt to talk to the sox FO. go totally quiet . That's part of the problem. For whatever reason/s, Hahn, Ventura and Reinsdorf have yet to weigh in. Perhaps they're waiting for today's deadline to pass with LaRoche officially retiring for fear of creating the complete nightmare situation of LaRoche trying to reverse course and come back again.

Sale has to be referring to the Drake/LaRoche situation in terms of his right to be in the clubhouse... And now Sale's not only saying KW lied or went back on his word, Chris somehow feels his position in the organization as one of the two franchise players allows him to "force" or "push" or limit KW completely in his access to that same domain. While not quite the equivalent of Sculley pushing out Steve Jobs, he's definitely overstepping. This is to the point where Jerry Reinsdorf needs to step in and settle things, like he did with Ozzie and KW.

Does Sale WANT to be traded? Or does he simply feel that his relationship with Hahn/Ventura/Cooper is so strong that he can justify flying off at the handle against KW and continue the simmering feud without any repercussions for his Sox career? Is that why Hahn and Ventura have been so quiet? Is this Sale's weird way of trying to show or prove to Reinsdorf that KW needs to be gone?

QUOTE (flavum @ Mar 18, 2016 -> 09:40 AM) And the thing is, he has no idea what a good major league clubhouse is like. He's been around a country club for six years, so now that they want to dig in a little, he throws a fit. Can we really even say that was the case in 2010, with guys like Omar Vizquel around when Sale came up as a rookie? I'd argue we had that laid-back vibe largely because of guys like Buehrle, Konerko, Dye, Thome...and the mix was certainly changed by players like AJ, Peavy and Rios, but things still worked relatively well even into 2012 when you had a new manager replacing one who'd worn out his welcome and double figures in terms of rookie pitchers. Now we're in a situation where Avi Garcia is a "veteran" compared to the rest of the players. There's been a tremendous amount of turnover, and some of the best players like Abreu and Quintana are among the quietest in terms of leadership. For all that we've heard from Eaton and Sale in the last two weeks, I don't think we heard that cumulative amount from David Robertson, for example, who was brought in largely to bring a little of that Yankee swagger and veteran leadership with him...ironically, one of the same reasons LaRoche was added to that mix in the first place, along with Cabrera and Duke. It's almost like every possible move last offseason in terms of the clubhouse chemistry backfired even more "off the field" with this Drake issue and also pouting Shark/Cooper feud. Bonifacio and Beckham were busts, Duke has joined the Sale/Eaton chorus and Cabrera acted like a clown for 2-3 months after he and Eaton got off to such terrible starts. It's almost like everything Hahn did this entire offseason basically was to offset all the bad the prior 16 months had wrought.

Where is Rick Hahn?

So if you're the Sox and you did make this agreement with LaRoche, isn't it better you realize the error in your letting it go to this extreme and correcting course NOW, before the season actually starts...rather than having it negatively affect clubhouse chemistry and linger on into the season with the new, largely veteran players? This team was designed to WIN NOW. And especially in this two year window that has been created by the way most of the new guys have been signed. The argument's certainly out there (and Passan made it as well) that it doesn't look good to go back on your agreement...but the problem is nobody knows the exact phrasing of that agreement other than Hahn/LaRoche and KW/JR, so everything since has been simply interpretations of the "reasonableness" and parameters of such. If guys like Eaton and Sale are so unhappy with KW and the way the White Sox handled this, they better think long and hard about their future with the organization. It's one thing to disagree with your boss in a way that's clearly unprofessional, it's quite another to make it the business of everyone in the outside world when having that discussion merely serves to cause the problems to linger or fester.

So if you're the Sox and you did make this agreement with LaRoche, isn't it better you realize the error in your letting it go to this extreme and correcting course NOW, before the season actually starts...rather than having it negatively affect clubhouse chemistry and linger on into the season with the new, largely veteran players? This team was designed to WIN NOW. And especially in this two year window that has been created by the way most of the new guys have been signed. The argument's certainly out there (and Passan made it as well) that it doesn't look good to go back on your agreement...but the problem is nobody knows the exact phrasing of that agreement other than Hahn/LaRoche and KW/JR, so everything since has been simply interpretations of the "reasonableness" and parameters of such. If guys like Eaton and Sale are so unhappy with KW and the way the White Sox handled this, they better think long and hard about their future with the organization. It's one thing to disagree with your boss in a way that's clearly unprofessional, it's quite another to make it the business of everyone in the outside world when having that discussion merely serves to cause the problems to linger or fester.

So if you're the Sox and you did make this agreement with LaRoche, isn't it better you realize the error in your letting it go to this extreme and correcting course NOW, before the season actually starts...rather than having it negatively affect clubhouse chemistry and linger on into the season with the new, largely veteran players? This team was designed to WIN NOW. And especially in this two year window that has been created by the way most of the new guys have been signed. The argument's certainly out there (and Passan made it as well) that it doesn't look good to go back on your agreement...but the problem is nobody knows the exact phrasing of that agreement other than Hahn/LaRoche and KW/JR, so everything since has been simply interpretations of the "reasonableness" and parameters of such. If guys like Eaton and Sale are so unhappy with KW and the way the White Sox handled this, they better think long and hard about their future with the organization. It's one thing to disagree with your boss in a way that's clearly unprofessional, it's quite another to make it the business of everyone in the outside world when having that discussion merely serves to cause the problems to linger or fester.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-191033091.html Sale screaming at KW story is everywhere now...

Haha...if he was Jon Rauch or Sean Tracey, he would definitely be out the door.